


Herr Lucifer, Beware, Beware

by gellavonhamster



Category: Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Dracula - Bram Stoker
Genre: Crossover, Don't copy to another site, F/F, Gen, Vampires, mentions of Lucy/Mina and Lucy/her suitors but not enough for relationship tags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:21:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28053090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gellavonhamster/pseuds/gellavonhamster
Summary: Instead of her men, the Bloofer Lady is found by a mysterious stranger endowed with the same gift (or bearing the same curse) as she.
Relationships: Carmilla Karnstein/Lucy Westenra if you squint, Lucy Westenra & Carmilla Karnstein
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11





	Herr Lucifer, Beware, Beware

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Herr Люцифер, берегись, берегись](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28052994) by [gellavonhamster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gellavonhamster/pseuds/gellavonhamster). 



> title and epigraph taken from Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath

_Out of the ash_

_I rise with my red hair_

_And I eat men like air._

_– Sylvia Plath,_ _Lady Lazarus_

Lucy dyes her hair for the first time in her life already after her death.

Twilight reigns in the room, where the air smells of perfume and mustiness; all windows are curtained, and the only light is coming from some thoroughly melted candles. This, however, causes difficulty neither for Lucy, as lately she has no trouble seeing in the dark, nor for her new acquaintance who has armed herself with a thick brush and is presently putting dye on Lucy’s hair. The flame of the candle standing on the table in front of Lucy keeps trembling nervously. A drop of dye falls on the bed sheet that Lucy is draped in as if in another shroud. 

“It’s green,” Lucy murmurs as she casts a glance at the swamp-coloured stain on her knees. In truth, she does not care much about the future colour of her hair – it is no longer possible for her to go for a stroll in daylight anyway. 

“That is just for now. On your hair, it will look red,” assures her Carmilla. That was how she introduced herself: “Call me Carmilla. This one is my favourite name.” It was her idea to dye Lucy’s hair. “It’s a small town, darling. You don’t need to be recognized. It’s enough that this much people are aware that you do not rest in peace.” ‘This much’ means her Arthur and Professor Van Helsing and Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris. Lucy watched them from behind the wall of someone’s moss-covered crypt while Carmilla – back then she didn’t know her name yet – was covering Lucy’s mouth with her hand and whispering in her ear: “See what they brought with them? They came to murder you. Forget what they meant to you, for they have ceased caring what you meant to them.” Lucy struggled to break away but couldn’t, because Carmilla, petite and delicate and outwardly not older than she, was as strong as five adult men – neither could she not look at the sharp wooden stake in Arthur’s hands. Then she let Carmilla lead her away from the graveyard, and left Arthur and the others by the crypt, possibly to wait for her until morning. 

“It smells like grass,” Lucy observes. The dye smells of grass indeed and, ever so slightly, of cucumbers, for some reason.

“It’s henna, my dear. It’s made from dried leaves.” After the final dab, Carmilla throws the brush into a basin, pulls the bed sheet off Lucy, tears off a piece of fabric with ease, and wraps it around Lucy’s hair. “Now you have to wait for about two hours, and then wash your hair.”

It appears that Carmilla finds it all amusing – dyeing Lucy’s hair, picking out her own dresses to give her. Lucy follows her instructions almost mechanically, without much thought. The world around her is now far too full of sounds and smells and colours, much more than it used to be, and her new life is far too full of rules she doesn’t understand properly yet and finds perplexing. Therefore, if Carmilla needs her in order to stave off boredom, then she needs Carmilla in order to learn to navigate this new world without dying for the second time. Besides, she is all but constantly starving, and Carmilla is a much more experienced huntress than she, and doesn’t mind sharing, seeing as she doesn’t waste time on small children, and adults have plenty of blood to spare to satiate the two of them.

There is never any blood left for the ones they suck it from, though – unlike Lucy, Carmilla doesn’t let her prey walk away. 

“It is high time for us, child, to discuss what we are going to do next,” says Carmilla, as if having sensed that Lucy is pondering over the reasons why she needs Carmilla and Carmilla needs her. She sits down on the edge of the table, and looks at Lucy downwards. In the dusk, her eyes shine like those of a cat. “What do you remember about the one who granted you eternal life?” 

What does she remember about the one who killed her?

“Not much,” Lucy says tentatively. Strange as it may be, these memories are clearer now than they were back when she was alive, but still fairly vague, still seeming as much of a nightmare as before. “He was tall, with long dark hair, with a sharp nose. With a dark moustache. With a… cruel face. I don’t know who he was and where he came from – I’ve never seen him in Whitby before.”

“ _I_ know who he was,” says Carmilla. Her face, usually so sweet and gentle even as she drinks the blood of another victim, looks just as cruel now. “Vlad Dracula, a Transilvanian count.”

“Are you acquainted?”

“Not in person,” Carmilla looks away. She still looks angry, but aside from hate, a certain suppressed pain is discernible in her countenance. “He took something from me.” 

“Took something?” Lucy echoes.

Carmilla gets up, approaches her from behind, and puts her hands on Lucy’s shoulders.

“Have you ever been in love, darling?” she asks. Her dainty hands stroke Lucy’s shoulders through the thin silk of the dressing gown.

Lucy thinks of Arthur – but she is no longer able to think of him the way she used to when she was alive. She is drawn to him as strongly as never before – but at the same time she is also drawn to her other two suitors, whom she only used to fantasise about briefly and lightly, and she cannot figure out what part of this attraction is love, and what is hunger. She thinks of Arthur’s slender neck, of blue lines on Dr. Seward’s pale wrists, of the outlines of veins on Mr. Morris’s strong arms. Of Mina in her bed, blanket thrown off in her sleep, throat bared to the July night. Of their blood that calls to her more vehemently than the dreams of kisses and embraces – although of those as well. 

“Yes,” she replies. If there is one thing she is sure of, it is that she has been in love.

“So have I,” Carmilla tells her quietly. Her hands stop moving.

“What was his name?”

“Her name is not important,” and Lucy feels, inexplicably, a strange joy upon hearing how calmly Carmilla pronounces that ‘her’. She pictures Mina again – Mina, who probably has no idea that her Lucy is gone. “What is important is that she was special. Against my nature I knew that I would not deal with her the same way as with all my previous lovers. I wanted to make it so that we would always be together. To make her the same as me and you. She knew what I was, and agreed to my proposal, just asked me to give her time to settle some affairs she was to leave in the past. That’s how special she was.” Suddenly, Carmilla’s nails sink into her shoulders. “Then he came.”

“What happened next?” Lucy asks. It hurts, but not too much – her reborn body is far tougher than before. She can bear it for a while if it helps her find out what Carmilla wants from her after all. “He bit her first, didn’t he?” 

Carmilla snorts with disdain.

“No. What would that have changed? What would have a man’s bite meant against mine? No, he just drank her dry. All to the last drop. When I found her, she was already dead. Not dead like us, my dear – completely dead.”

So that’s it.

“You want revenge,” Lucy says. Carmilla loosens her grip a little, and bends down so that her cheek is touching Lucy’s. 

“Do you not?” she enquires.

Lucy thinks of Arthur – of the sharpened stake in his hands, of the wedding they didn’t get to have. Of her mother, dead with a mask of horror on her face. Of herself, a carefree and happy girl that exists no more.

She enjoys wandering at night, but she used to love the sun.

“Probably,” she admits gingerly. Carmilla puts her chin on Lucy’s shoulder. 

“Then,” she says with satisfaction, “come to London with me.”

The next couple of hours they spend preparing for the journey – packing dresses and shoes, undergarments and toiletries. In the process, Carmilla enlightens Lucy on the subject of the enemy they are going to face. According to her, he’s not just a vampire – he’s also a sorcerer, and thus more powerful and dangerous by a long way. 

“How will we beat him then?” Lucy cannot help wondering. Carmilla shrugs. 

“By the power of grief and rage, love and loss,” she says. “Also, we’ll catch him by surprise. He doesn’t expect you to come for him, all the more not me. Men like him have a short memory.”

Already towards morning, Lucy bends over the bathtub and washes off the henna. Examining the strands of her wet hair in the candlelight, she sees that they are red.

“I have learned to do without mirrors a long time ago,” remarks Carmilla, hugging her around the waist. “But sometimes one cannot help missing them. Let me assure you, darling, that this colour looks good on you.”

Red like dried blood – her own blood spilled by Dracula, his blood that will get spilled when she and Carmilla get him, the blood of Arthur and Mina and Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris who – somehow it feels so easy to believe it right now – will all be with her sooner or later.

Lucy smiles.

“That’s what I thought,” she says.


End file.
